


Senses Reeled

by Zee (orphan_account)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-25
Updated: 2005-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:22:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killer bees, strange pink flowers and hazards of duty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Senses Reeled

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kate, Jamjar, Livia and Prop for audiencing and beta-ing and hand-holding.

As a rule, John doesn’t like alien bug-things. If they aren’t attached to his neck and trying to suck the life out of him, they’re revealing his position to a Wraith or eating his power bars or chasing after him in buzzing swarms, like they are right now.

“I have mentioned that I’m fatally allergic to bee stings, haven’t I?” Rodney pants out, running beside him.

“We’re in another *galaxy,* these aren’t bees,” John replies. Nevertheless, whatever they are, they’re gaining on them. And they’re big, and buzzing, and have very sharp stingers.

“Really? Excuse me, but did you *miss* the black and yellow stripes, the buzzing noises, the stingers-“ John yanks Rodney to the side, hard, and they tumble through some bushes and down a sharp hill.

It kind of works. The bees have stopped chasing them, anyway, and are now hovering above their heads, buzzing softly.

“Oh, *wonderful.” Out of the corner of his eye, John can see Rodney wincing and sitting up. “Now you’ve gone and done it, I’ve injured my back far too much to continue running-“

“I don’t think we have to run anymore.” Interrupting Rodney is strangely satisfying. “I think they were—herding us.”

“Yes, of course, of course,” Rodney says distractedly, his eyes now on the large, neon-yellow and pink flowery plants behind him. “They must have a symbiotic relationship with these man-eating venus flytraps, bringing them their prey-“

“Don’t touch-“ John says, but it’s too late, and Rodney now has a faceful of bright pink pollen.

“Rodney!” John’s already at his side, and Rodney is coughing and spluttering.

“More wonderfulness,” he gasps out. “Have I mentioned that I have debilitating hay fever?”

John isn’t paying attention; he’s too busy dodging his own blast of pink pollen. He almost succeeds, and only half his face gets covered in the awful stuff. He coughs, hacking up pink mist.

“Major,” Rodney says, and John looks up at that, because he’s *never* heard Rodney’s voice tremble like that, not even when they were all facing certain death. 

Rodney is shaking, and John can see his pupils dilated all the way. “Major, there’s something wrong with me.”

“Of course there is, haven’t you ever looked in a mirror?” Rodney doesn’t even scowl at the wisecrack, and John isn’t feeling so great either. His face *tingles,* and then he feels pins and needles all over him, getting more and more intense, and fuck, it hurts, *burns.*

From the strangled gasping sounds Rodney’s making, he’s experiencing the same thing. John is dimly aware of dropping his P-90 and falling to the ground, his vision whiting out for a second—

And then just like that, the pain is gone. In its place, there’s just--warmth. He feels very, very warm, too warm even for a tropical planet like this.

John opens his eyes. Rodney is still lying on his back, panting and moaning like he’s in pain, and of course: he got a bigger dose than John did. 

John crawls over to him, which is kind of difficult because he’s not warm, he’s *hot* now, sweating and vaguely dizzy and the only thing he can focus on is Rodney, Rodney on his back, Rodney’s lips parted, Rodney panting and in pain.

“Rodney,” he gasps, dimly aware of his hand stroking Rodney’s chest. “Rodney, tell me where it hurts-“

Rodney’s eyes snap open, and John catches a quick flash of almost entirely black irises just barely ringed by blue, and then he’s being jerked forward and his lips are pressed against Rodney’s.

He groans and moves away, but apparently his body is interpreting ‘move away’ to mean ‘get closer to Rodney and grab his crotch,’ because that’s what John is doing, and oh fuck, oh fuck it’s good and it’s the only thing that makes the unbearable heat go away. He can hear (feel) Rodney moaning, and then he’s moaning too, and Rodney is actually *ripping* John’s vest off. John would yell at him that that’s kind of important, but he’s too busy yanking Rodney’s shirt off, getting his mouth on skin.

‘This shouldn’t be happening,’ his brain says. But his brain is unimportant, his brain is useless, and any logical thought is completely swamped by the overwhelming need tingling all over his skin and deep down in his chest. The pins and needles are back with a vengeance, and the only thing that makes them go away is humping Rodney into the ground. 

Rodney seems to agree. John’s never seen him like this, out of control and gasping and wild beneath him. His lips feel wet and *hot* trailing down his neck, and his hands are tight on John’s hips, pulling him down against him again and again. The part of John that’s still thinking is hypnotized, seduced, made helpless by this Rodney who is *completely* unlike the snappish scientist he knows.

John has stopped thinking, his mind and body both recognizing sex with Rodney as the topmost priority. 

It seems like Rodney gets his hand inside John’s pants at light speed, squeezing and rubbing and *fondling* John’s dick like he can’t stop, like all of his formidable brainpower is focused on John’s cock. It’s a dizzying thought, and John falls forward, supporting himself on his elbows while he shoves his dick into Rodney’s hand, over and over again. There’s no rhythm or flair to it, there’s nothing sexy or romantic, there’s just the pink stuff making his eyes water and Rodney’s god damn *hand*, pulling the orgasm out of him at a brutal pace.

He makes a strangled, animal noise when it hits, and collapses down on Rodney. He doesn’t feel quite as hot afterwards, and the pins and needles slowly subside, too. 

Whatever it was that got them is wearing off, he realizes. And it wore off of him first, and he’s the team leader and the ranking military officer, he should get Rodney out of this—

That thought disappears, because Rodney is clearly still very much under control of whatever weird pollen stuff blasted them. One minute, John is panting on Rodney’s chest, and the next Rodney’s hands are on him, in his hair, on his shoulders and chest, pushing and shoving him down frantically. Pushing him until John is at eye level with Rodney’s crotch, and Rodney’s hands are tangled in his hair, gripping and tugging painfully.

John shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, but he can see Rodney’s other hand trying to undo his pants, and failing because it’s trembling too much. Without even thinking, John reaches up to help him out, and the next thing he knows Rodney’s dick is shoving down his throat.

John chokes and tries to pull back, but Rodney’s hands are in his hair, pushing down. Not strong enough to *actually* hold him down, but his hands combined with the helpless whimpering sounds coming out of Rodney’s mouth—well, John isn’t going *anywhere.* 

He’s never done this before, and he’s still crazy enough from the pollen bomb to not care. His entire universe has focused to sucking and licking and slobbering all over Rodney’s dick, and he doesn’t even mind that Rodney’s pushing his face up against his groin, so that John’s nose is brushing Rodney’s abdomen. John closes his eyes and lets Rodney to whatever it is he needs to, lets his fingers grasp at John’s hair and his cock thrust hard into John’s mouth. 

When Rodney comes, John chokes and splutters and pulls back, getting it all over his chin. The desperation and panic in Rodney seems to have subsided, and he slumps back, his eyes closed. John has barely enough presence of mind and strength to sit up and then flop down beside him, and the last thing he sees before passing out is the cluster of bees buzzing around them.

***

He wakes up slowly, with a very strange-feeling headache. He opens his eyes, and his vision is bleary. He sits up, wiping pollen-residue off his face and out of his eyes, and looks around.

They’re still in the same clearing; the bees are gone, and the strange flowers that had attacked them are completely closed up. It’s nighttime.

Rodney is still asleep, his pants open and his shirt lying rumpled beside him. There are traces of pollen on his face.

John stares. He really has *no idea* how to deal with this situation. Which, well, that feeling isn’t exactly new to him since his arrival at Atlantis, but this is much worse than the usual fuck-ups he gets himself into. 

Okay. He can deal with this. Really. The first thing they need to do is reconvene with Ford and Teyla and get the hell out of here. Which means waking Rodney. 

“Rodney,” he says, reaching out to carefully shake Rodney’s shoulder. “Rodney, you have to wake up.”

Rodney opens his eyes, blinks a few times, then jerks up straight. “Oh my god, I can’t *see!*” 

Okay, that’s an unexpected problem, and John grabs Rodney’s hands before he can start clawing his own eyes out—literally, John thinks, from the look on Rodney’s face.

“Rodney,” he says, struggling to keep his own voice calm. There’s still some of the stuff in his system, making him shaky. “Rodney, you have to calm down. I think you have some of that crap in your eyes, here, hold still—“ he fishes something resembling a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes Rodney’s eyes and face clean as best as he can.

Rodney blinks some more, squinting, and John cautiously lets him go.

Then Rodney shakes his head in frustration. “Everything’s blurry. Oh god, what if it’s permanently affected my vision? I had perfect 20/20, god, how will I be able to continue my work-“

“They invented these things called glasses, Rodney.” John lets go of him, standing up. The bees are gone, and the clearing doesn’t seem dangerous anymore.

Rodney stands up, too, then looks down at himself and blushes. “....so I take it the last few hours weren’t just some sort of pyschadelic hallucination.”

John feels his face heat, and he looks away. “Uh, no.” Rodney looks like he wants to say more, but John holds up a hand to stop him, and for once that tactic actually works. “We can discuss it later. Right now, we need to find Ford and Teyla.”

Rodney nods and goes silent, and weirdly, that worries John. You know Rodney’s all right when he’s bitching and complaining and generally acting like an asshole; John has never known Rodney to just stay silent like this.

They start hiking, and John can’t help notice that Rodney is limping a bit. John himself only got half a blast; he can’t imagine the lingering effects a full one might have. It makes him want to get Rodney to the infirmary as soon as humanly possible.

They make their way back to the meadow where they landed the jumper, and Ford and Teyla are already there. Ford is grinning from ear to ear, looking kind of dazed; his smile disappears for a few seconds whenever Teyla shoots him a stern look (without much force behind it, John notices), but then the grin creeps back. 

John raises an eyebrow. “You two all right?”

Ford turns pink. “Yes, sir. We, uh, we managed to lose the alien bees, sir.” He’s red by now. John waits, but Ford doesn’t say anything else. 

He opens his mouth to come up with his own lame excuse, but Rodney beats him to the punch. “The Major and I managed to beat them at their own game and track them, following their flight patterns. I thought the way they were attempting to herd us meant that they were possibly working in tandem with a nearby civilization, but after observing them for a few hours, it appears that they’re just normal alien bees.” His voice is as haughty and Rodney-ish as usual, and John is kind of impressed that he’s able to do that when he’s still visibly shaking from the after-effects of that fucking flower. 

Ford looks taken aback. “You think they’re *normal*--?” Teyla glares at him, and he shuts up.

“We are relieved to find that you are all right, Major,” she says. “And I hope you’ll agree that this planet doesn’t need further exploration.” 

“Oh, I agree,” John says emphatically. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

***

John tells himself that he isn’t avoiding the issue. He’s busy, Rodney’s busy, they both lead very busy lives fraught with peril and general busy-ness. Besides, he and Rodney never have any time together to discuss it—and whether that’s because he’s avoiding Rodney, or Rodney’s avoiding him, John isn’t sure.

The problem is, John knows talking about this wouldn’t *be* a problem if he could just treat it like any other field hazard they’d run into. But he can’t stop thinking about it, obsessing over the memory of Rodney’s hands, his dilated eyes, the way he’d felt beneath John.

What is wrong with him? John has been 100% straight all his life, except for that one drunken incident in college—so maybe 99%. Even if he did swing that way--*Rodney?* The guy isn’t all that attractive, and okay, so *maybe* he has that ‘I am a super-genius’ thing going for him, but every affair that John had ever had with a super-genius had gone horribly, horribly wrong. So really, John should be running as fast as possible in the opposite direction of Dr. Rodney McKay.

Nevertheless, John had sucked his cock and enjoyed it, and not just because he was in a pollen-crazed state at the time. He catches himself thinking about the blow job during debriefings; speculating about the feel of Rodney’s mouth on his dick during agricultural meetings with the Athosians; imagining what it would be like to fuck Rodney while he was in the middle of particularly boring routine expeditions.

When the whole week goes by without him and Rodney saying a single word to each other that isn’t mission-related, John makes up his mind to do something. He can’t stand it: Rodney isn’t looking at him, or snarking at him at every opportunity, or talking to him unless he absolutely has to. John hadn’t realized how much he enjoys just hanging out with Rodney until that goes away.

He tries to get Rodney alone all day, but it isn’t happening. Finally, he goes to Rodney’s bedroom at around eleven and camps out on Rodney’s sofa chair, knowing how that looks and not caring.

John has to wait until four in the morning before Rodney finally returns.

“Jesus christ,” he says when Rodney comes in, “Do you stay up this late *every* night? No wonder you’re so sunny and charming all the time.”

“Yes, well, the labs would get blown up and consequentially kill us all if I didn’t.” It’s only a half-hearted dig at his fellow scientists—Rodney looks like he would much rather turn tail and run then stay in the room and trade barbs.

John stands up and walks over to him before he can escape. “I wanted to talk to you-“

“Wait, let me guess and save you the effort. You’re sorry it happened, it’s an unfortunate hazard of wandering across alien planets, and we should both just put it behind us like good little soldiers.”

“Or we could keep avoiding each other and continue acting like petulant teenagers,” John says. “That’s been working really great so far.”

Rodney gives him a withering look. “What do you want me to do, Major? I’m not used to having chemically-induced sex with military officers on other planets.”

John winces at that. He’s not used to it, either, and if he told Rodney what he *wants* him to do, Rodney would probably call him a pervert and possibly try to hit him.

Although... maybe not. Honesty is the best policy, right? “I want to do it again,” he says, staring at Rodney.

“You want to go *back* to that godforsaken planet?” Rodney says incredulously. “Are you *insane?* Did you *miss* the killer bees and the-“

“No, Rodney.” John wants to shake him. “That wasn’t what I wanted to do again.”

Rodney’s face is blank for a moment, and then his eyes widen and he takes a step back.

Now John is feeling nervous. “Only if you want to, of course.”

“John, for christ’s sake. You’ve had sex with an Ancient, how can I possibly hope to compete with that?”

John laughs. “Well, you can’t go intangible, which I think is a big point in your favor.” He steps closer, until Rodney is backed up against a wall. He still looks like he wants to flee, but John can see desire there, too.

“John, do I need to remind you that you’re *straight*? *And* military?”

“Do I need to remind you that we’re in another galaxy, and that my sexual preferences are not anyone’s main concern?”

Rodney hmms at that. “Okay, point. But don’t you think-“

“That this is a bad idea? Obviously not.”

Rodney scowls at him. “Yes, well. You also don’t think suicide missions are bad ideas, so I can’t trust your judgment.”

John laughs at that. “Yeah, maybe not. Still....” he eyes Rodney’s mouth purposefully.

It’s incredibly satisfying to make Rodney blush. “Stop that, Major,” he barks. “Your oh-so-subtle seduction techniques won’t work on me.”

“Why not? And how’s this for being subtle.” He moves until he’s only a few inches away from Rodney. “I want to have sex with you. Now, preferably.”

Rodney takes a sharp breath in. “Well,” he says, and John notices smugly that his voice sounds a little strangled. “I suppose directness has its merits-“

John has made his decision, and he isn’t going to wait any longer. He leans in, kissing Rodney on the lips.

Rodney makes a soft, surprised sound, but he doesn’t push John away; instead, John feels pressure on his lips, and then they’re really kissing, heads tilting to the side and eyes closed and tongues exploring each other’s mouths.

It’s completely different from the first time they’d kissed. Rodney’s lips feel so soft, and he kisses back slowly, leisurely, his tongue twining around John’s. It isn’t frenzied, or desperate, it’s just... them. John is completely aware of everything in a way he wasn’t the first time they’d done this: the way Rodney tastes, the way he sighs and breathes into John’s mouth, his body tensing and then relaxing in John’s arms. Rodney’s body feels *familiar* to him, even though they’ve only done this once before.

And now that he has the real thing, John almost thinks that the other time didn’t even count. That wasn’t sex, it was more like medication, or a survival tactic; calling it real sex would be like calling CPR a real kiss. But John *is* kissing Rodney right now, and they’re going to have real sex, and it makes John almost giddy to know that *he’s* doing all this, that the pollen has nothing to do with it.

They stop kissing eventually, and Rodney’s face is pink and he’s blinking a lot. “Oh,” he says in a quiet voice. “That was-“

John kisses him again, and whatever Rodney had been saying is smothered against his mouth. When he leans back again, Rodney is opening and closing his mouth like a fish. “What was that for?”

John smiles, a little sheepishly. “I was afraid you were going to say this was a bad idea again, or something like that.”

“It *is* a bad idea.” Rodney’s voice sounds normal again, sarcastic and loud and dry. “But I have to admit that we’ve both survived much *worse* ideas.”

“So you’ll go with this because it’s only a slightly bad idea? Gee, thanks.”

“Well, what did you expect? Me to fall at your feet and tell you how sexy and wonderful you are and proclaim that I can’t survive without groping you on a daily basis?” Rodney is giving him a smug, amused look, and John realizes he’s blushing. “You’re really not used to romantic rejection, are you?”

John raises an eyebrow. “That was you rejecting me?”

“Well, no. But I didn’t want to seem *easy*; imagine what the other scientists would say!”

John grins and pulls him closer. “’You got Major Sheppard? Was he drunk or something?’”

Rodney sniffs. “Oh, very funny. My sides are splitting from guffaws.”  
Then Rodney smiles at him, a genuine smile that isn’t smug or sarcastic or arrogant. It’s not an expression that John has seen often, if ever, and it makes him catch his breath.

It’s almost better than seeing Rodney gasping and desperate, and John realizes with a start that now? He can have both.

Rodney seems to be realizing the same thing, because his smile is turning smug and satisfied, like a cat with a bowl of cream. “You realize that I’m going to be the envy of the whole city? All the girls are going to try and kill me in my sleep. Probably half the guys, too.”

John snorts. “Shut up, Rodney.” That gets him a slightly harder, more intense kiss, and Rodney’s hands grasping his shoulders tight, pulling him in close. 

When they stumble to the bed, there’s no pain or burning sensations or pink shit sticking to his eyelashes; there’s just Rodney underneath him, breathing hard and staring up at him with clear blue eyes.


End file.
